Scripture: Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Matthew 21:1-11
We’ve been in this sermon series for ten weeks now, and we’ve reached what one twentieth-century scholar calls the “Mount Everest of messianic prophecy.”[1] The New Testament makes clear that this “suffering servant” is none other than Jesus Christ. In fact, Isaiah 53 is quoted or alluded to in the New Testament more than any other Old Testament chapter—at least forty-one times.[2]
In today’s scripture, Isaiah helps us understand the meaning of Christ’s atoning death on the cross better than nearly anything else in the Bible!
I want to talk about this text by describing three ways in which people are silenced in today’s scripture—it’ll make sense as we go along, I promise:
Number one: Silenced in Sin… Number two: Silenced in Suffering… Number three: Silenced in Astonishment.
Years ago, I attended a work-related conference. I knew the keynote speaker pretty well, and—to be honest—I was not looking forward to it. She wasn’t a great speaker, and I didn’t expect much. But she had some authority over me and my career, so I needed her to think well of me. After all, that’s why I was there.
And as she was speaking, I did what many of us do—I got on my phone. It was a Blackberry, to give you an idea how long ago this was.
I texted Lisa: “So-and-so is speaking. It’s actually not as horrible as I thought it would be.” And I hit “send.”
Only… I didn’t send it to Lisa.
I sent it to the woman who was speaking.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s ever done something like that!
As you can imagine, I had to do some fast talking afterward. I had to smooth things over. I had to say, in so many words, “I promise that text is not as bad as it sounds…” And I said a lot of words—trying to convince her, trying to explain myself.
Which is exactly why Proverbs 10:19 says, “When words are many, transgression is not lacking.”
And in that moment, transgression was not lacking—because I was lying.
This is why, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”[3] But we don’t like speaking so few words. We want to explain ourselves… make ourselves look better in the eyes of others… We want to justify ourselves. “It’s not as bad as you think!”
We use words to manage our image—to convince others we’re right… or at least not as wrong as they think.
That’s exactly what the Pharisee does in the parable. Remember? He stands in the temple and says, “I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector! I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’”[4] He has plenty to say—trying to convince God that he’s a good man.
But the tax collector? He knows he’s not fooling anyone—especially God. So he uses just a few words: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”[5] And Jesus says it’s that man—not the Pharisee—who goes home justified.
With that in mind, listen to Paul in Romans 3. He says that all people—Jews and Gentiles alike—are under the power of sin. “No one is righteous—not even one… no one does good, not a single one.”[6]
And then in verse 19, Paul tells us why God gave the law: “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.”
Every mouth stopped.
In other words, apart from God’s grace, we will one day stand before God with nothing to say. No excuses. No defense. No words of self-justification.
We will be silent… when we consider our sin and guilt.
And that’s the first half of the gospel: that we can do nothing to make ourselves right with God.
I came of age in the 1980s, during what people now call the “Satanic panic.” There was an excellent recent podcast on the history of the “Satanic panic.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can see now how this panic shaped people in my youth group.
For instance, I remember one night after a youth retreat, a friend of mine—Chuck—stood up and gave his testimony. He said he had given his life to Christ on the retreat, and as a result, he was getting rid of his record collection. He believed that the songs on these records glorified the devil—of course, he also said you only heard some of these messages if you manually spun the records backwards. Which is terrible for your needle, by the way!
Now, I was all for Chuck’s desire to repent of sin. But if I’d been his pastor at the time, I would have counseled him not to necessarily throw all his records away. But other Christians were doing that back then! That was, after all, the height of the Satanic panic…
So that’s what Chuck did… one by one… He had a trash can in front of him. He even broke them in two before trashing them. One of those albums was Abbey Road… by the Beatles. I did not yet own that album on vinyl. I wanted to say, “I’ll take that one!” But it was too late. Ruined.
But let me tell you what I think is a far more “Satanic” song than most of the songs on those records he threw away:
“My Way.” By Frank Sinatra.
You may love it—if so, I sympathize. I love Sinatra too, I promise. I was in New York City a few years ago, and I made a pilgrimage across the Hudson to Hoboken, New Jersey, to see where he grew up and went to church! But think about that song’s message. A man looks back on his life, and the thing he’s most proud of is this: I did it my way.
That’s not something to celebrate—that’s the very thing that got us into this mess in the first place… It’s the very thing the devil tempted Eve to do in the garden!
Because insisting on doing things our way instead of God’s way—that’s the very nature of sin.
Which is exactly what Isaiah says in verse 6 of today’s scripture: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way.”
That’s our human condition.
And unless God himself intervenes rescue us, we are in serious trouble.
And that’s Point Number One: Someday, every human being, apart from God’s grace, will stand before God, silent because of our sin.
Number Two: Silenced in Suffering…
As we’ve seen, Isaiah compares us to sheep who insist on going our own way—and get lost as a result.
But good news: Isaiah shows us another kind of sheep in today’s scripture. Listen to verse 7:
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
This verse reminds us of Jesus standing before the high priest Caiaphas—and later before the Roman governor Pilate. The striking thing is not what Jesus says… but what he refuses to say.
The high priest presses him: “Have you no answer to make?” Yet Matthew tells us, “Jesus remained silent.”[7] Before Pilate, the false accusations come again, and once more “he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge”[8]—so the governor is amazed. He’d never seen anyone on trial for his life unwilling to offer words in his defense.
Jesus’ unwillingness to speak was not weakness… or confusion… or despair. This was Isaiah 53 being fulfilled: “He opened not his mouth.”
Which is especially remarkable because Pilate was looking for a reason to release him. Jesus had every opportunity to defend himself—and if he had only spoken, he could have refuted every charge and walked free.
But Jesus wasn’t there to defend himself. He was there to give himself—“to give his life as a ransom for many.”[9]
By remaining silent, Jesus becomes our substitute.
And here we come to the heart of the gospel: substitutionary atonement.
Christ suffers for us… in our place. He bears the penalty our sins. He takes our judgment. On the cross when he quotes Psalm 22 and cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” he even suffers our hell.
And this theme of substitution runs throughout the Old Testament.
For instance, when Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac, God provides a ram—
a substitute.
At Passover, the blood of a lamb spares the firstborn—
a substitute.
In Leviticus, the worshiper lays his hand on the sacrifice, and it is accepted “to make atonement for him”—the animal’s life for his life—a substitute.
In Exodus 32, after the golden calf episode, Moses pleads, “Blot me out of your book.” He is willing to stand in the people’s place—but he can’t. God says each sinner must bear his own guilt.
It’s as if Scripture were saying: the need for a substitute is real… but the right substitute has not yet come.
And you even see it in the Book of Jonah. Remember: The prophet Jonah refuses God’s call and boards a boat on the Mediterranean to the other side of the known world. God sends a storm. As the storm rages and the pagan sailors fear for their lives, Jonah finally tells them the truth: “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you.”[10]
In other words: “I can die so that you can live.”
And when they do throw him overboard, the sea grows calm… One life is given to save many.
But even here, it’s incomplete. Jonah is a flawed, reluctant substitute. His sacrifice is not truly atoning.
Still, it points forward—because one day, “something greater than Jonah” will come, as Jesus himself says,[11] who will willingly give his life, not just to calm storms, but to bear the judgment of sin itself.
Now, some modern people today object to this idea of substitutionary atonement. They say that if Jesus dies in our place, that’s “cosmic child abuse”—as if an angry Father takes out his uncontrollable wrath on an unwilling Son.
But that completely misunderstands and caricatures both the nature of God and the meaning of the cross.
Jesus is not a victim of circumstances beyond his control. Jesus is God—God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, he prays, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done.”[12] In his humanity, he recoils from the suffering. But in perfect obedience—and in perfect love—he embraces the Father’s will.
Because Father and the Son are not opposed to one another. They are united in a single purpose: to save sinners.
As Isaiah says, in verse 10, “it was the will of the Lord to crush him”—and because Christ is also the Lord, it is his will to be crushed, if that means our salvation.
God loves us—and if dying on the cross is what it takes to save us, then God will not spare even himself to do so.
Did you hear that? If dying on the cross is what it takes for God to save us, then God will not spare even himself to do so.
Which is why Jesus says, in John 12:27: “Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came!”
And what is that reason?
Isaiah tells us that very clearly in verse 5: “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” And then verse 6: “and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
I say this often because it’s true: Christ lived the life we failed to live, and he died the death we deserved to die.
On the cross, God laid on him—all of it—our sin, our guilt, our judgment.
And he bore it—not as a reluctant victim, but as a willing Savior… eager to save lost sheep like us.
And that’s Point Number Two: Silenced in Suffering.
Number Three: Silenced in Astonishment…
For this point, I want to focus on verses 13 to 15 of chapter 52… Here, Isaiah pulls back the curtain on God’s Servant—the one who will be exalted and lifted up, yet only after a shocking humiliation. His appearance will be so marred, so disfigured by suffering, that people are appalled at him. And yet, through that very suffering, he will “sprinkle many nations,” bringing cleansing and salvation far beyond Israel.
The result is that even kings—those who always have something to say—will shut their mouths in astonishment, because they are seeing something they never could have imagined: victory through suffering, strength through weakness, glory through sacrifice.
Likewise, when we comprehend what Christ has done on the cross, it should astonish us… it should leave us speechless.
To see why, I want to remind you of a story from the gospels—the healing of the paralytic in Mark chapter 2.
Jesus is teaching in a crowded house in Capernaum—standing room only. Four men bring their paralyzed friend, but they can’t get through the crowd. So they climb onto the roof, tear it open, and lower him down right in front of Jesus.
And what does Jesus say?
“Son, your sins are forgiven.”
That’s not what they came for. They came for healing—physical healing. But Jesus seems content to stop there—as if forgiveness of sins were enough.
The scribes, of course, are scandalized—but not by the healing. A physical healing would be impressive enough—but uncontroversial. But forgiving sins? That’s blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins.
So Jesus asks, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?”[13]
And we think we know the answer.
Of course it’s easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” Because you can’t see whether it’s happened or not. Forgiveness is an invisible reality. You can’t prove that someone’s sins are forgiven.
So then… Jesus does the visible thing—he tells the man to stand and walk, and he does… Jesus does the visible thing of healing the man physically so that everyone watching would know he has authority to do the invisible thing: to forgive sins.
And from our perspective, that makes sense. Forgiveness seems easy. Physical healing, though… that seems hard.
Just scanning any church’s prayer lists, you would think that we Christians are much more anxious to have physicalhealings than spiritual healings. Yet, when I compare the prayers of most churches with the the prayers of the apostle Paul for his churches—which we see again and again in his letters… Paul seems much more eager to pray not for physical healings or for deliverance from suffering… so much as for the ability to endure suffering, and sickness, and persecution, and difficult circumstances.
In fact, you might recall one famous episode in Paul’s life when he prayed three times for physical healing for himself—to remove that mysterious “thorn in his flesh” in 2 Corinthians 12—and what happened? Jesus told him no… Instead the Lord said, “I won’t give you a physical healing… But I will give you a sufficient amount of grace to handle your suffering.”
To be clear: there’s nothing, nothing, nothing at all wrong with praying for physical healing… Since I’ve been here, in fact, we’ve celebrated physical healings we’ve seen in this church. I just want to say that if the physical healing doesn’t come, that doesn’t mean God isn’t still working in powerful ways—even if one of those ways is giving us grace to handlephysical suffering.
Besides, here’s what we need to remember… something that is especially relevant for this upcoming holy week and Good Friday…
It’s not hard for God to work miracles. It’s not hard for Jesus Christ—who is God—to make the lame to walk, the blind to see, or even to raise the dead…
That’s not hard… I mean, the author of Hebrews says that Christ is, at this very moment, “upholding the universe”—sustaining the universe—enabling us to exist—“by the word of his power.”[14]
In other words, the Bible says we are enjoying our every breath and every heartbeat at this moment because the Lord is choosing at this moment to give them to us… So physical healings are not hard for the Son of God.
Let me tell you what’s hard… The forgiveness of sins—that’s what’s hard.
After all, was it easy for Jesus sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane and pray that this cup—in Old Testament terms, the “cup of God’s wrath”—might pass from him?
Was it easy when he was beaten, mocked, crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross?
Was it easy when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Was it easy for the Son of God to experience the God-forsakenness that we sinners deserve, which is nothing less than hell itself?
That was hard.
And that is what forgiveness cost God… the precious and infinitely valuable blood of his Son… Indeed, it cost God hisown blood. Because Jesus is God.
Why did he pay it?
Hebrews 12:2 tells us: “for the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross…” For the joy. What joy? The joy of making you and me a part of his family forever!
Listen… I’m talking to some people right now who struggle with self-esteem… who have low opinions of themselves… Let me tell you: If you are in Christ, it was a joy for God to make you his beloved child. You bring him joy!
You’ve heard a million times that God loves you. But those are only words and talk is cheap. God doesn’t just tell you he loves you in words…
He shows you… on the cross!
And this brings us to Palm Sunday… which we’re observing today…
On this day, Jesus rode into Jerusalem… and the crowds were anything but silent.
They were shouting:
“Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the King!”
It’s loud. It’s joyful. It’s full of expectation.
But there’s something the crowds don’t understand yet. They think Jesus has come to sit on a throne. They don’t yet see that he has come to hang from a cross.
And think about how he rides into the city. Not on a war horse… as a conquering king would… but on a donkey… And not just a donkey, a baby donkey.
I like the way pastor Tim Keller puts it: “You know what kind of king rides into a city on a baby donkey? The kind who’s about to get slaughtered.” The kind of king who didn’t come to take lives… but to give his life.
In this week ahead, we will journey with Christ to Good Friday… and the cross.
As we do so, may our mouths be silenced as we consider our own sin—and how we have no excuse… no words of defense… no justification for it.
And then may we reflect on Christ’s silence in suffering—and how he, of all people, could have justly defended himself but chose not to, so that he could save us.
And finally, on Good Friday—when we see anew that the King who rode in on a donkey is also the Lamb who was slain on our behalf—may we stand before God astonished, in silence… saying nothing… but thank you, Lord… Thank you… Thank you…
Amen.
[1] Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament Prophets (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2002), 58.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Matthew 5:37
[4] Luke 18:10-12 NLT
[5] Luke 18:13 ESV
[6] Romans 3:9b-12 NLT
[7] Matthew 26:62-63 ESV
[8] Matthew 27:14; cf. Mark 15:4–5 ESV
[9] Mark 10:45
[10] Jonah 1:12 ESV
[11] Matthew 12:41 ESV
[12] Matthew 26:39
[13] Mark 2:9 ESV
[14] See Hebrews 1:2-3.